Siemens, the German engineering giant with more than 56,000 U.S. employees, says it will cut up to 15,000 jobs worldwide by the end of 2014, though it didn't specifically say how many of those cuts will be in the U.S.

The cuts represent about 4% of the company's total workforce. Roughly 5,000 of the job cuts will be in Germany and the other 10,000, or so, will be abroad, according to the German news agency dpa.

Some of the cutbacks will come through employee transfers -- not all will be job cuts, says dpa. The Munich-based company, which makes industrial machinery ranging from trains to power generators, has 370,000 employees globally.